The Executioner

Sixty-Five

Mollie Woods was born on Christmas Day in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania. Though she was born a healthy baby, her lengthy and complicated labor had put too much strain on her mother’s womb, and Mollie was to be her first and only child.

Mollie’s birth brought changes to her deeply religious family. Her father, John, found it hard to come to terms with the fact that he would never have the son he always wanted. In his eyes, God had punished him and his wife with a daughter. And that punishment had to be passed on.

As soon as she was able to speak, Mollie was taught to pray. And pray she did. Three times a day, naked in the corner, kneeling on dried corn kernels.

As time went by, John Woods’s bitterness grew. He used his faith as a hiding place for his anger and little Mollie was always at the receiving end of it all. During her childhood, her skin was mostly black and blue.

When it came to looks, Mollie took after her mother, with a delicate heart-shaped face, plush pink lips, big hypnotic brown eyes and long, wavy brown hair. At thirteen, she was taller than most girls her age and her womanly body was developing fast.

John Woods saw Mollie’s beauty as a new test from God. She was already attracting the attention of older boys, and John knew it was only a matter of time before she gave in to temptation and sin. He had to teach her right from wrong.

The teachings started just after her thirteenth birthday. Twice a week her mother worked the night shift at a twenty-four-hour supermarket in the city center. Mollie dreaded those nights. In the darkness of her room, she’d curl up in bed and pray, but no God would listen. Time and time again she had to endure her father hammering his body against hers, showing her what boys wanted to do to her.

The nightmares began around the same time her father started invading her room. And with them came the nosebleeds. At first Mollie could make no sense of the violent images she saw, but they felt real. Falling asleep was so frightening she’d do anything to stay awake. But soon her troubling visions expanded. They weren’t confined to her nightmares anymore. She started having them in broad daylight – kids being beaten and abused by their parents, wives by their husbands – the images just kept on coming, until the day one petrified her soul.

She had a vision of her mother being run over by a drunk driver. That night, in vain, she begged her mother not to go to work. Her father had slapped her across the face and sent her to her room. He’d had enough of her crazy dreams. He smiled the secret smile and told her that once her mother had gone to work, he would go to her room and pray with her.

The knock on the door from the police came an hour after Mollie’s mother had left. She’d been involved in a hit-and-run accident and died instantly.

That was the night Mollie ran away. The night something snapped inside her father’s head.